DHAULAGIRI-Witness of the Kalinga War.

DAYA RIVER

Odisha has always been one of my favourite states, as that is the state where I spent the earliest part of my childhood. My father was an Engineer who studied in Battersea Polytechnic, London on Government of British India scholarship way back in 1945. Once back in the country in 1949, he  was totally committed with zeal to work in India and develop the country which had recently become free from its foreign rule.

Nehru was the Prime Minister of India then and, he had said that Dams were the temples of modern India.

Hirakud dam project over the River Mahanadi was the project where my father was posted and so my earliest memories are of the great river flowing fast and past our house which was on the banks of the river.

As I boarded a plane from Delhi to take me to the historical city of Bhubaneswar, I closed my eyes  and lo and behold when I opened my eyes I found that I was back in time and in the year 261 B.C. I found myself wandering on the lush green land on the banks of the river Daya.

"Daya" means compassion. I wonder if the river was named Daya after the Kalinga war which took place on its banks in 261 BC.

Bhubaneswar city and its surroundings speak a lot about the 11th and 12th century A.D. but I was more interested in the second century B.C. and in Dhaulagiri the site which transformed Chand Ashok the son of Bindusara and grandson of Chandragupta Maurya into Dharma Ashok, also known as Priyadarshi Ashok. Dhaulagiri is located on the outskirts of the city.

Ashok  had become the King of Magadh after shedding the blood of all his siblings including the rightful heir to the throne Sushim, the eldest son of Bindusara. Before becoming the ruler of the Magadh empire, Ashok had won many wars and had been appointed as the Governor of Vidisha in what is now Madhya Pradesh. At that time Sushim was the Governor of Takshashila. While at Vidisha Ashok married a local Buddhist girl named Devi. After the death of Bindusara, Ashok moved to Pataliputra and ruled from 268 B.C. to 232 B.C.   

It is said that Kalinga which is now in  Odisha, was earlier ruled by the Nanda Kings, who were the rulers of Magadh from (345 B.C. to 321 B.C.)before Chandragupta Maurya( 322 B.C. to 297 B.C.). Kalinga later won its freedom and became an independent Kingdom ruled by Ananth Padmanabha.  The Magadh empire under the Mauryas was spread from present day Afghanistan in the west to present day Bangladesh in the east. It covered the entire Indian subcontinent except for some parts of present-day Tamilnadu, Karnataka and Kerala. The capital of Magadh was at Pataliputra, and it had provincial capitals at Takshashila in the North and at Ujjain in the centre of India.  After becoming the ruler of the Magadh Empire, Ashok invaded Kalinga to conquer it.  

THE DAYA RIVER IS STILL RED.

There was a massive war on the banks of the River Daya, where women and children too died fighting  for the freedom of their land. Seeing the immense destruction and bloodshed on the banks of the river, Ashok was filled with remorse and felt utter revulsion at the outcome of the war.  He decided to change his path and become a benevolent monarch.

He became a follower of Buddha who had preached about peace and compassion almost two hundred years before the war of Kalinga. Buddha lived from 563 B.C. to 483 B.C. Ashoka decided to spread the teachings of the Buddha all over his own empire and also in the neighbouring countries. In 483 B.C. when Buddha died his relics were divided into eight portions and stupas were built over these relics. All these stupas were confined in and around the state of the present day Bihar.   Ashok opened up some Stupas, removed the relics from them and built 84000 stupas all over his empire over these relics. Ashok formulated rules for good governance and got them  carved on stone. These are called Rock edicts and stand as a testimony to the rule of Ashok and the rules for governance  that he laid down.  The language used for the inscription was Prakrit and the script used was Brahmi. Ashok also got a number of pillars erected in all those places where Buddha had himself preached. The rock edicts, stupas and pillars have stood the test of time and even after having remained in oblivion for centuries, they have enabled us to re discover the splendour and glory of the Mauryan Empire.

ASHOKA'S ROCK EDICT AT DHAULAGIRI

I had always wanted to visit the place that had converted  a conqueror like Ashok and made him into a peace loving and benevolent King. Kalinga and the banks of the river Daya were fascinating places and now I was in that very place where the war took place and transformed a warrior King into a  peace loving King. Ashok inscribed the history of the war and laid down rules of governance on a rock near the River Daya. 

THE PEACE PAGODA AT NIGHT

The Japanese have built a peace pagoda on a small hillock overlooking the river. There is a "sound and light programme" held at the peace pagoda every evening, narrating the history of Ashok and the Kalinga war. The river Daya, to this day is red, folklore says that the colour changed to red after this infamous Kalinga war.

There is no evidence of the exact place where the war actually took place. There are no markings and no demarcations. The banks of the river today are green and the river merrily and majestically winds its way, while people like me stand in awe looking at these green lands which one day changed the history of India.

Ashok gave us the Buddhist religion in its present form, he spread the teachings of the Buddha far and wide by sending his own son Mahindra and daughter Sanghamitra to Srilanka. They carried with them the  sapling of the original Bodhi tree under which Buddha had attained enlightenment. Ashok's teachings, rock edicts, pillars and stupas survive to this day and tell us about the history of those days. All of them have stood there for over 2300 years and are responsible for spreading the wisdom and philosophy of compassion, and peace that is the bedrock of civilisation. 

All these edicts, stupas and pillars over a period of time and revival of Hinduism had got lost. They were not maintained and so there was overgrowth of vegetation, some of the pillars were removed from their original place and used in newly built forts, in many places bricks from stupas were removed for construction work. Two pillars were brought to Delhi by Feroze Shah Tughlaq(1309-1388) and one of them can still be seen at the Feroze Shah Kotla cricket grounds in Delhi.  It was officers of the East India Company who discovered the stupas at Sarnath, Sanchi, Vaishali in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. Sir William Jones who died in 1795,  Francis Buchanan, Colin Macenzie, James Princep(1799-1840), Alexander Cunningham discovered all these glorious pillars, edicts, stupas and gave back a very important part of History to us. James Princep, was responsible for deciphering the Brahmi script which was derived from the Kharoshti script. He was able to translate the writing on the Ashoka Rock edicts and therefore we know of the remorse that Ashok felt after the war of Kalinga, and also all the rules that he laid down for administration and welfare of the people as well as animals.

Present day India uses the Ashoka Chakra in the centre of its National flag. The emblem of the Government of India is the symbol of four lions facing four different directions, seated on an inverted lotus pedestal. This statue formed the  pinnacle of an Ashoka pillar found at Sarnath near Varanasi. Sarnath is the place where Buddha imparted his first sermon to five followers after he attained enlightenment. 

The river Daya and the Dhaulagiri hillock are mute witnesses to the tragedy of the war of Kalinga which gave us a benevolent and mighty Mauryan emperor known to all of us as Ashoka the Great.